Dear All,
I am one of the co-admins of an online public forum.
Recently, as we have been writing a forum terms of use we came to face the need to write a proper copyright disclaimer.
As I mentioned I am the co-admin of a forum, whose service provider is located in the US, but myself and other co-admins are not based in the US, actually some of us are in Europe,Canada and South-East Asia.
The above information is important to understand the kind of disclaimer we need to write and also to learn what our liability as admins of this forum is. What copyright law does apply in our case?
Also, with the help of friends, some of them acclaimed international writers and according to their experience, we came to write a copyright disclaimer that needs independent expert verification (I'll quote it in the end of this message, I apologize if this is an abuse and I'll remove it if found that way).
I welcome any help that can shade some light upon these issues.
Thank you in advance for reading this.
Kind regards,
Sam
------ quote of the forum disclaimer as is:
By starting a thread or posting a topic in a forum, engaging a conversation in a chat room, or any other feature provided by the forum software, you implicitly agree with the rules of the Forum copyright disclaimer and terms of use, which are set out below. It is advised that you read this before participating in this Forum. You must then click the Agree or Disagree button to proceed.
Spam and virus filtering software are applied to every message that goes through our forums.
Any written material sent by a person to the forum, including but not restricted to posts, replies to posts, e-mails, messages or conversations sent to the forum, once sent are considered published, in accordance with the International Copyright laws. The author owns the copyright to the content of all the posts, threads, messages and conversations that he or she has written.
The forum, its admins and moderators (to be referred as mods) accept no responsibility for the opinions and information posted on its forums by others.
The forum-name disclaims all warranties with regard to information posted on its forums, whether posted by forum admins, mods, registered members or anonymous users; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall the forum and its admins and mods, be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages, or damages of any kind whatsoever, resulting from loss of use, data or profits, arising out of or in connection with the use of any information posted on a forum-name forum, thread, post, message or conversation.
By posting material, the posting party warrants and represents that it owns the copyright with respect to such material, has received permission from the copyright owner, or that the material is in the public domain. The posting party further warrants and represents that it otherwise has the full and unencumbered right to post such material and that such posting will not infringe any rights or interests of others.
Forum users can, however, quote limited portions of published material in accordance with the 'fair use' principle adopted by international copyright laws (ie section 107 of the US copyright law). There are no hard and fast rules to 'fair use'. The principle does not specify a certain number of words, however as a rule of thumb, journalists generally limit themselves to quoting a few lines from an article or a few paragraphs from a book, and always acknowledging the source and author of the work (this principle does not, however, apply to song lyrics - they should not be quoted for any reason). If you wish to discuss a published work in depth, you can paraphrase points made by the author rather than quote them directly.
In any case where you believe the forum is in direct violation of International copyright laws, we request that users report the incident to the forum admins or mods, so that the matter can be rectified as soon as possible.
Although "forum-name" admins and mods monitor the quality of all material present in the forum, independently of its form and condition, regarding inappropriate postings, they might undertake editorial control of an individual posting wherever and whenever they see fit for the highest purpose of ethics and public interest. In accordance with this, we reserve the right to prevent posting to the forum in the event of failure to comply with the forum terms of use.
I am one of the co-admins of an online public forum.
Recently, as we have been writing a forum terms of use we came to face the need to write a proper copyright disclaimer.
As I mentioned I am the co-admin of a forum, whose service provider is located in the US, but myself and other co-admins are not based in the US, actually some of us are in Europe,Canada and South-East Asia.
The above information is important to understand the kind of disclaimer we need to write and also to learn what our liability as admins of this forum is. What copyright law does apply in our case?
Also, with the help of friends, some of them acclaimed international writers and according to their experience, we came to write a copyright disclaimer that needs independent expert verification (I'll quote it in the end of this message, I apologize if this is an abuse and I'll remove it if found that way).
I welcome any help that can shade some light upon these issues.
Thank you in advance for reading this.
Kind regards,
Sam
------ quote of the forum disclaimer as is:
By starting a thread or posting a topic in a forum, engaging a conversation in a chat room, or any other feature provided by the forum software, you implicitly agree with the rules of the Forum copyright disclaimer and terms of use, which are set out below. It is advised that you read this before participating in this Forum. You must then click the Agree or Disagree button to proceed.
Spam and virus filtering software are applied to every message that goes through our forums.
Any written material sent by a person to the forum, including but not restricted to posts, replies to posts, e-mails, messages or conversations sent to the forum, once sent are considered published, in accordance with the International Copyright laws. The author owns the copyright to the content of all the posts, threads, messages and conversations that he or she has written.
The forum, its admins and moderators (to be referred as mods) accept no responsibility for the opinions and information posted on its forums by others.
The forum-name disclaims all warranties with regard to information posted on its forums, whether posted by forum admins, mods, registered members or anonymous users; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall the forum and its admins and mods, be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages, or damages of any kind whatsoever, resulting from loss of use, data or profits, arising out of or in connection with the use of any information posted on a forum-name forum, thread, post, message or conversation.
By posting material, the posting party warrants and represents that it owns the copyright with respect to such material, has received permission from the copyright owner, or that the material is in the public domain. The posting party further warrants and represents that it otherwise has the full and unencumbered right to post such material and that such posting will not infringe any rights or interests of others.
Forum users can, however, quote limited portions of published material in accordance with the 'fair use' principle adopted by international copyright laws (ie section 107 of the US copyright law). There are no hard and fast rules to 'fair use'. The principle does not specify a certain number of words, however as a rule of thumb, journalists generally limit themselves to quoting a few lines from an article or a few paragraphs from a book, and always acknowledging the source and author of the work (this principle does not, however, apply to song lyrics - they should not be quoted for any reason). If you wish to discuss a published work in depth, you can paraphrase points made by the author rather than quote them directly.
In any case where you believe the forum is in direct violation of International copyright laws, we request that users report the incident to the forum admins or mods, so that the matter can be rectified as soon as possible.
Although "forum-name" admins and mods monitor the quality of all material present in the forum, independently of its form and condition, regarding inappropriate postings, they might undertake editorial control of an individual posting wherever and whenever they see fit for the highest purpose of ethics and public interest. In accordance with this, we reserve the right to prevent posting to the forum in the event of failure to comply with the forum terms of use.
